If I Forget You
by MissRachelT
Summary: An exploration of Han and Leia's relationship throughout the original trilogy - as it takes shape alongside Leia's inevitable mourning for her lost world of Alderaan.
1. Chapter 1

**ONE**

They'd been on Echo Base for about two weeks, and Han Solo was still not sure whether he wanted to kill the Princess or whether he was starting to like her.

She was, he had to admit, a hard worker. While he was sceptical of royalty both by nature and by profession, the little Alderaani Princess had surprised him with her nerve, her sense, and her particular brand of blithely cutting efficiency. Hell, if she'd been born somewhere else, as someone else – perhaps as a particularly hot-tempered scavenger's daughter in a muddy hut on some godforsaken planet on the other side of the galaxy – he'd have gladly invited her aboard the Falcon for a spin, maybe more. But that was neither here nor there.

Nonetheless, Han thought as he, hands in pockets, surveyed the mess area, the Falcon could've been fixed days ago, and by this point he was just stalling.

She wasn't there, _again_.

And he went on with his day, _again_ , until late at night, _again_ , he made his final stroll around the base before bed. This time he decided, on a whim, to drop by the observation platform – the Hothian skies were vast and dark after the setting of the frigid sun, and to Han, slightly claustrophobic after weeks on land, they were a comfort.

For once, he saw her before he heard her, a small, white-clad and white-faced figure sitting at a metal table with three pilots, their heads close together. Their voices were low, and he could not quite understand their murmurings – it was all, he thought, very interesting, and not an opportunity to waste.

He hung back quietly, unnoticed, until finally, the three young men said their goodbyes and left her alone. Leia, too, rose, but Han was quicker.

He strolled toward her, and she looked perplexed as he fell down into one of the vacant chairs and propped his feet up on the table.

"Your worship," he drawled. "Fancy catchin' you at last. I've been trying for the past week."

She sat down again, which surprised him, and crossed her arms.

"And why would you try to 'catch' me, Captain Solo? You know where I normally perform my work."

He was sure _nobody else in the galaxy_ talked as properly as she did, and it drove him crazy in a number of different ways.

"Yeah, yeah. You don't normally eat with the commoners, though, do you, sweetheart?"

He grinned when she didn't respond. He enjoyed winding her up – felt, vaguely and instinctively, that she perhaps liked it too.

"'Cept your three new boyfriends. I guess one flyboy isn't quite like the other, after all. Where'd you pick those up, anyway? Pretty puny, aren't they? You could do better- "

"Alderaan."

She said it so rapidly, so uncharacteristically quietly, that he couldn't understand at first.

"Huh?"

"I picked them up on Alderaan."

If he'd expected anything, that was not it. His chair rocked forward rather too violently, and he lowered his legs to regain his balance. Finding himself face-to-face with her, his bravura melted somewhat. Han coughed.

"Right. Yeah. I guess you're their Princess, huh?"

"Queen."

He had to lean forward to hear her properly, but that word, he caught.

"Queen. My mother was Queen before me."

"She died when -?"

"Yes, she died when."

Her intense, brown eyes rested on his face, insistently and restlessly, as her fingers peeled off one white glove. The hand they revealed was pale and smooth and, he noticed with some interest, it trembled.

"We're trying to find out how many of us there are. Alderaanis. Where were you born?"

"Corellia." he found himself responding. It was the first time, he thought, that she'd taken him entirely seriously – and it was unsettling.

She nodded. "I've been there. Leafy. Green. Lots and lots of trees."

He smiled at her and – wonder of wonders – she smiled back. He might not be sure he liked her, he thought, but he sure liked that smile.

"Yeah. That's what it's like."

"There were about two billion of us. That's what my mother said, and she would have had reason to know. My estimate currently, based on what I know and what these three men know, is that a few thousand of us survived. Perhaps more. We are compiling a list of those we know worked on different planets, or who, like me, might have been travelling at the time of the disaster."

Her pale, small fingers fumbled in her back pocket, and she fished out a couple of grimy, folded pages. Smoothing them with her wrist, she pushed them toward him.

"This is what I have so far."

Han leaned in. His eyesight was better than perfect, usually, but he had to strain to make out the names, scribbled in a neat but tiny handwriting, that crowded the pages. Some had question marks. Some were struck out.

He whistled between his teeth.

"Those three you saw, they came to me, and they're not the only ones. Our planet is gone – our cities, our history, our food, our clothes, our families. We're all that's left."

She was a girl of white steel, like twice-frozen snow, but _Gods_ , she was young, as well, to bear a burden like this. It certainly put his own debt to Jabba the Hutt into some perspective – and _some_ would say he bore that relatively minor burden pretty lightly, anyway.

"And thus - "

She was probably the only person alive who used the word "thus".

"- I've been trying to collect information during my off-hours, so, when the war is won, the galaxy shan't forget there was once a place called Alderaan."

That was the first moment Han Solo believed the war could be won and would be won, and he glimpsed, for just an instant, the reason why men old enough to be her grandfather listened to her. She was a royal, true, but it wasn't enough; barely-grown princesses of destroyed planets did not usually wield a great deal of influence. Leia was listened to because she was Leia Organa, Princess-maybe-Queen of Alderaan, specifically _that_ princess, _that_ barely-grown girl, with stone in her eyes and steel in her heart.

"Sweetheart," he said, and for once, it was not meant to irritate her – not really.

"Nobody could forget there was a place called Alderaan once."

She searched his face for mockery and found none.

"I hope _I_ never forget." Leia responded quietly.

Her precious sheets of paper were still in front of him and, for lack of an inspirational response of some sort, Han scanned the list of unknown names. Halfway the page, two Organa names were neatly written down. Both were struck out.

His chest felt heavy all of a sudden, and she noticed where he was looking.

"I never had any real hope, of course," she said in her low, clear voice.

"I knew they'd go down with her. But I had to know for sure."

Han nodded, and when she rose to her feet and beckoned him to the window, he joined her without thinking.

"Where's Corellia? Can you see it from here?"

As a matter of fact, he could and, narrowing his eyes, he pointed his finger at a blurry but familiar speck in the sky.

"There. There she is. Haven't been there in years, but there she is."

And suddenly it meant something that she was there. He'd never cared all that much for the rock that had given him life, even if it was green and fresh and rather, he guessed, beautiful, but at this singular moment in time, it meant something that she was _there_ , like he could reach out and touch her.

She, too, pointed.

"That's where Alderaan was, but you'd know that. She was snow white and surprisingly bright from afar, but green and blue as you came closer. There was one particular lake - "

Her voice stalled, and Han rested a heavy hand on her shoulder.

"Yeah. I bet there was, kid."

They stood for a moment, and the moment passed. Leia smiled, blinked twice, then turned toward him.

"I guess all I'm saying, flyboy, is that she was mine."


	2. Chapter 2

**TWO**

"I'd just as soon kiss a Wookiee," she'd snapped, looking him up and down with as much scorn as she could muster, and the look in his eyes as he turned to storm away told her her words had hit home.

She had not been sorry. Han had unexpected depths, it was true, and he was rather better, conversationally, than she'd first expected during that entirely unnecessary and frankly ill-planned rescue aboard the Death Star. He was still, however, a smuggler, a mercenary, and prone to deserting them at the first sign of trouble. And that's what he had done.

Except, Leia thought to herself as she strode into the hangar, he had not, and now both Luke and Han were missing. A smattering of military personnel were standing near one of the screens; they saluted her as she approached, and she nodded.

"General Rieekan," she greeted the senior officer tensely.

"Any signal received?"

She knew and liked Carlist Rieekan too well to think he'd try to soften the blow for her, and he didn't.

"No, Princess."

The greying General hesitated for a moment, rubbing his chin with one hand.

"If they aren't in within the hour, we will have to close the doors for the night."

"I am aware. Thank you."

They walked back to the control room side by side, the General and the Princess, jointly and in entirely different ways in charge of this – this whatever this was, this rebellion, this resistance, this mess.

"Solo is a capable man. If anyone can find Skywalker and bring him back, it'll be him."

"I know."

She did know. Her initial message to him about Luke's disappearance had not necessarily been an order for him to head out to try and retrieve their friend – it was something far more primal and far more _embarrassing_ than that – but upon reflection, there was nobody she'd rather have entrusted that mission to. Leia was unsure, all things considered, about what that meant for her perception of Han Solo, but it was true.

Rieekan glanced at her sideways.

"You're the child of your parents, your Highness."

That made her smile in spite of the hollow feeling in her stomach. He'd know, of course; he'd been one of her father's closest confidants for as long as she remembered, and he had served her mother with a dedication paralleled by few others.

"What makes you say so, General?"

"You've got leadership in your blood, that's all. You have no idea how much easier my job has become since you returned. The men respect you."

It was, she reflected as she made a polite response, exactly the right thing to say.

Leia Organa had always been bold, with more courage, perhaps, than was prudent, but her parents had taught her young that there was a right person for each job, and that her right job, as a Princess of Alderaan, was and had to be that of a leader. Her mother especially - her wonderful, her powerful, her _endlessly impressive_ mother – had imprinted upon her young mind that in many ways, that meant she carried the greater burden than her men. Leadership, too, Breha had said, takes courage.

Leia recognised that as the doors finally closed, an hour and ten minutes later. It took courage to be the one who sent out her troops, the one who waited for news good or bad and then dealt with the outcome either way. The one who picked up the rubble of other people's lives – and of her own – and the one who really couldn't take any more loss, but who would if she was called upon.

It made her want to cry and it made her want to scream, but she did neither of those things, instead dismissing the few remaining pilots with a nod and a "goodnight". She gazed up at the Falcon as she strode out of the hangar again – wondering about the Wookiee, briefly, then wondering about the Wookiee wondering about Han.

As she stepped into her quarters, Leia took off her jacket, then, as an afterthought but not really, opened a comm link to the hangar– _justincasejustincasejustincase_. If she had to lose another world, so soon after her first, then she would know about it, would know every little thing the moment it happened.

She was sitting on the floor and scribbling furiously by the time a knock on the door startled her. Rising to her feet, she bid the visitor enter and, not wholly to her surprise, found herself looking up at the General once more.

"I – General."

"Princess Leia. I hope I do not disturb."

Leia smiled and gestured at her handiwork – sheets upon sheets scattered over the floor now.

"Of course not, General, and I apologise for the disarray. I received some more information today thanks to our new additions, and I am adjusting the files. My desk, I'm afraid, did not quite provide all the space I required - "

There was really no need at all to explain any of this, of course. She knew why he was there, and she knew he'd known what she was doing, and she knew her duty and hated it.

Leia gestured in the direction of her small table and chairs.

"Can I offer you a drink?"

He sat down and without waiting for his response, she took a bottle out of her locker and poured two small glasses.

"It's Corellian – a gift from Captain Solo."

She allowed herself a smile.

"Nonetheless, it's tolerably nice. Let us drink."

He raised his glass, and they spoke the toast in unison, as they both knew they always would.

"To Alderaan."

"Alderaan."

They sipped the wine, which was, indeed, quite nice – and Leia waited patiently for the General to broach the subject she knew was on his mind. He took a few minutes, then visibly steeled himself.

"In regard to the new information on the – matter, your Highness, I suppose no new intelligence has been received regarding…?"

His wife and son had been on the planet as it exploded. She could not be sure, but she felt it in her bones, and he did too, but like her, he would always see their shapes on every base, in every town, every hovel on every planet he ever visited. They all had their shapes now, their shadows. That, too, she suspected they'd never lose.

"I'm afraid not, General. The last information I received confirmed our previous suspicions. There is no reason to believe it was inaccurate."

And with that, she reflected passively, almost numbly, as she sipped her _nice_ Corellian wine in her _nice_ quarters, she broke his heart, like she'd broken many others and like she'd live to break many more.

 _They're likely to have died, I'm afraid_.

 _There's no reason to believe they were off the planet surface at the time._

 _They were most likely at work._

 _I'm sorry._

The words were hateful to her, but Mother had once told her leadership required courage, and Leia would not shirk.

They finished their wine after exchanging a few more polite, friendly observations, then he left, leaving her to the night.

The comm link remained open; the Princess remained awake.


	3. Chapter 3

**THREE**

In the end, the comm link remained dead even as the Princess remained awake - and, shortly after a nervously-awaited dawn, Leia sent a contingent of speeders out into the ice plains to find the missing men. The droid kept reminding her, of course, of the _astronomically terrible_ odds, but she was too experienced a politician to let that wear her down. (Additionally, she could locate his off-switch with her eyes closed.)

She was there as the speeder carrying them flew into the hangar, and as Han – irritatingly _okay_ , barely _ruffled_ Han – stepped out of the doors, she strode closer, then halted abruptly about a foot away. Thank the gods, she thought. _Thankthegodsthankthegodsthankthe-_

"Reporting for duty, Your Highness." he said with a mock salute and his characteristic half-smirk.

She wanted to slap him into the next solar system, and instead opted for the next best thing, hugging him suddenly and fiercely, feeling his arms tighten around her for just a moment. He'd almost become one of her shapes, her shadows – her past – her memories, of which she already had too many for one life.

"You're late." she responded coolly as soon as they'd let go. The corner of his mouth twitched, and she knew she'd smile back if she wasn't careful.

"Where's Luke?"

He nodded his chin at the second speeder.

"In there. Unconscious and smells like shit, but he's alive. Brought him back to you in one piece."

Leia would not quite have phrased the matter in the same way, but she had to admit his statement was accurate, and only once Luke was safely in medical hands – and in a giant tube of bacta – did she inquire how, exactly, the smell had happened. He responded succinctly, as she supposed he always would. She looked at him sideways.

"Good work. If you weren't such a _mercenary_ , we may yet make a rebel out of you."

He looked surprised, and she smirked.

"What, Captain Solo, you think I've never spent a night in the freezing cold, heated solely by the guts of a freshly killed animal?"

In fact, she hadn't; although she had had more than enough life experiences for a woman thrice her age, _that_ was a new one even to her. Still, she liked the faint trace of doubt in his eyes and didn't mind keeping it there a while longer. _Your Worshipfulness_ , indeed. _I can crawl inside a tauntaun with the best of them, Solo_.

"I woulda thought you had your servants for that, Your Highness," he drawled, but it came a beat too late. Leia loved, _loved_ , how easily she could throw him off sometimes. It was childish and ridiculous and completely and utterly below her, but _God_ , it felt nice, and it compensated somewhat for his impossibly rakish smile.

Of course, he could fluster her just as easily, as he demonstrated mere minutes later.

His implication that she _wanted_ to keep him with her, that the thought of letting him go was in any way painful to her, was laughable, of course, but when he implied she had in any way confessed her true feelings for him, she exploded. As if she _would ever_ confess to such a thing.

"Why, you stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking – _nerf herder_!"

Even if she'd lost her temper, she'd been rather proud of the barb itself – although kissing Luke, she realised in the very middle of that particular action, was probably not her best ever follow-up.

Han could take her taunts and her temper and emerge relatively unruffled – besides, he deserved them, both of them, because he was a mercenary and a smuggler and definitely, _definitely_ a scoundrel – but Luke could not. She'd seen the look in his eyes when he thought she wasn't looking; she'd seen it in men's eyes before and classified it generally as a great big nuisance. Encouraging Luke was unnecessary and, frankly, counterproductive.

Han was different. As frustrating, as infuriating as he was, he gave as good as he got, and that was at the very least _interesting_ to someone so firmly used, since her early teens, to being taken seriously.

And of course when he _wasn't_ busy being utterly unreliable and mercenary, he was a pretty useful person to have around. It was he who went to check out the mysterious droid, and it was he who reported to her, over a comm link, on its probable origins. It was he who watched her give orders to her men once the attack had started, from high up where he was working on the Falcon and, for once, his response as she looked up and caught his eye was simply a nod. He was a laser-braised flyboy, sure, but he understood danger in a way she wasn't entire sure Luke did.

Less than two hours later, the base was collapsing around her and she knew, with the sharp instincts of someone who intimately knew failure, that all was lost, again. She crisply gave him clearance to leave over comm; he was not in it for her cause, and he was not in it for her, so he might as well get out with that rusty wreck of his relatively undamaged.

When he came running into that control room less than five minutes later, she looked up just enough to bark "Why are you still here?!" before turning back to her screen. Only as a voice announced that Imperial troops had entered the base, he took her arm.

"Come on, that's it."

His voice was quiet, his face earnest. He had dust in that absurd mane of hair of his, she noticed absent-mindedly. And he was right.

"Give the evacuation code signal."

As he led her away, she looked back.

"And get to your transports!"

More good men and women would die that day and had already died that day, and she wondered, briefly, which faces she would see again, and when, and where.

They reached the Falcon as the footsteps of Imperial Stormtroopers echoed through the base. She was exhausted and frustrated and quietly, helplessly furious.

"Would it help if I got out and pushed?!"

"It might!"

In the end, that was not quite necessary, and that bucket of bolts he optimistically referred to as his ship decided to cooperate at last.

"See?"

She sighed in relief and in exasperation all at once. Was it just _his_ face that did these things that made her want to smack it? Was it a smuggler thing?

"Someday you're going to be wrong, _and I hope I'm there to see it_." she snapped at his shoulder as the ship gathered speed. He ignored her.

And as they shot into space, she thanked the gods of her parents that he had not been wrong - and that she'd been there to see it.


	4. Chapter 4

**FOUR**

They received R2's message as they sped away from the misty Hoth atmosphere – it was brief, but C3PO – useful for once – decoded for them.

"Master Luke has gone to the Dagobah system."

It was as if someone had slapped Leia's face, hard – they'd just escaped torture and certain death at the hands of Darth Vader, but this moment was the only one in recent memory that Han saw her looking genuinely distraught. He cursed under his breath, and not entirely because they were still being chased by a veritable cloud of Imperial Starfighters.

She didn't say a word, instead released a long, slow breath. She had plenty of temper, he'd noticed, except when it mattered. It made him ever so slightly uncomfortable.

"Look, Princess," he tried, outmanoeuvring three fighters and taking aim at a fourth.

"I'm sure he's got good reason."

 _What reason_ , he thought to himself, as her only response was a tense "Watch out!" – because _clearly_ he usually flew with his eyes shut – _what good, triple-damned reason could that farm kid possibly have to -_

 _It ain't because she doesn't need you that you've got any right to leave, kid._

He hadn't left, after all, even though he knew, and Chewie knew, and _hell_ , by this point the fucking _galaxy_ knew that Jabba would have his head, or any more sensitive body part, for this. But you didn't just up and desert her Worshipful High-And-Mighty Goodness Princess Leia Organa, five-foot-nothing and fuelled largely by her very own brand of extraordinarily refined bravado.

"They're getting closer."

Shit, he really did fly with his eyes shut, apparently. Luckily she was around to remind him of these vital facts of life.

"Oh yeah? Watch this."

Han was fairly sure she thought he was just Corellian trash, but he'd show her that even trash could be damn –

And then nothing happened.

"Watch what?" she snapped, and he had no immediate response.

He tried again.

"I think we're in trouble."

The droid piped up.

"If I may say so, sir, I noticed earlier the hyperdrive motivator has been damaged. It's impossible to go to light-speed!"

 _You're telling me now_.

He jumped to his feet.

"We're in trouble."

For once, she did not have a snippy response prepared and ready, which should've given him a great deal of satisfaction but somehow didn't. As he pushed past her, he turned and grabbed her shoulder.

"Leia, can you fly?"

He'd never said her name before, he realised, and he wondered if she did, too. If she remembered this after all this was over, he'd probably end up languishing in a dungeon somewhere for that one.

Leia nodded, her eyes steel rather than panic.

"Yes."

She jumped into Chewie's seat and grabbed hold of the wheel. If she hadn't been a Princess, he idly thought as he ran, she could've been a damn great girl – all things considered.

He'd been working frantically for less than two minutes when the ship shuddered with a familiar, and ominous, kind of shock.

"Han, get up here!"

He did, running down the length of the ship – and one glance ahead confirmed his suspicions.

"Asteroids!"

For all her talent for stating the obvious at the worst possible time, she was a damn good pilot – if she'd been half as bad as he would've suspected her to be a month before, they'd be space dust together now. He wondered, briefly, whether princesses pulverised differently from smugglers.

"Maybe you'd sparkle."

" _What?_ "

Luckily, his next action adequately distracted her.

"What are you doing? You're not actually going into an asteroid field?"

"They'd be crazy to follow us, wouldn't they?"

He wasn't half as sure of himself as that line sounded, of course, but that was kind of the line of business he was in. They bounced around increasingly larger, increasingly faster space rocks, and he sped up.

"You don't have to do this to impress me."

Her fingertips brushed his arm, and part of him wished that, while he wasn't exactly doing this to impress her – _survival would be a fine start, Princess_ – he'd achieve that goal anyway.

 _Fat chance, space jockey_.

"Never tell me the odds!" he barked as that droid – why had they ended up with the useless droid, again? – once more produced a series of numbers that were about as depressing as they were likely accurate.

The good news was that the Starfighters were rapidly falling apart – in the most literal sense of that phrase.

The bad news was that, give it a minute or two, so would they. The ship shook harder and more frequently by the second, asteroids whizzing by in front of them - and he could tell even _her_ nerves of steel were taking a beating.

Glancing to the side, he found her staring at him like he was a crazy person – which, to be entirely fair, was her usual approach to him. Oh, the stories she'd one day tell her fancy Senatorial friends, in that ridiculously maddening Core accent of hers -

"You said you wanted to be around when I made a mistake; well, this could be it, sweetheart."

"I take it back!"

That, too, wasn't as satisfactory as it would have been in a situation where they weren't actively engaged in dying.

"We're going to get pulverized if we stay out here much longer!"

"I'm not going to argue with that."

He was out of ideas, until he wasn't – and while this particular idea led him to believe her idea of him was probably correct, it was also the only thing that might just save their lives. Like he'd done pretty much constantly throughout the thirty-eight years of his existence, he took a chance.

As the last Starfighters exploded behind them, he pointed.

"There. That looks pretty good."

None of them got it, not even Chewie – but she did.

"What looks pretty good?" she asked, as she rose to her feet, but he knew she understood, and she knew he knew she understood, too. Maybe some princesses were notorious risk-takers, as well.

As they slipped into the depths of the asteroid, he fervently hoped he did, indeed, know what he was doing – but at least he found a place to park the Falcon, and at least they might have _some_ respite to fix those damn temperamental hyperdrives.

There was that other thing, too, of course.

As the asteroid shook and the princess stumbled back into his arms – a lightweight, sure, but a warm, breathing, _surprisingly human_ lightweight whose hair, after all this time, still kind of smelled like the type of fresh, snowy mountains guys like him so rarely got to see, let alone climb – he couldn't really ignore that other thing any longer.

As she informed him that being held by him wasn't quite enough to get her excited, and as he, restoring her to her feet, informed _her_ that there simply wasn't time for anything else, and as she watched him walk away with that pale, unreadable face of hers, he knew he was indeed completely crazy, and, therefore, completely crazy about her.


End file.
